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MALENE DJENABA BARNETT

By Dallas Dunn

Malene Djenaba Barnett is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, textile designer, and community builder based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work explores how objects, symbols, and material traditions carry memory across generations of the African diaspora. In three recent bodies of work— Black Power Scripts, a series of ceramic wall murals; Fragment Futures, a continuation of her celebrated explorations of the Jamaican yabba vessel; and Illusions of Softness, a series of ceramic vessels that translate delicate lace doily patterns into sculptural clay forms—Barnett examines how language, domestic objects, and material culture can recover histories that have been fragmented, suppressed, or overlooked. Working primarily in clay, she draws from architectural, textile, and ceramic traditions across Africa and the Caribbean to create objects that function as vessels of memory and declarations of cultural resilience.

Black Power I, 2026

Stoneware with metallic glaze | 75 x 50 inches

Black

Power Scripts is a series of handsculpted ceramic wall murals that transforms the contemporary Adinkra alphabet—a symbolic writing system created by Dr. Charles M. Korankye— into sculptural declarations of Black liberation. Carved directly into clay surfaces and assembled as relief compositions, each mural carries the phrase “Black Power,” rendered not in English but through this reclaimed script that bridges ancestral symbolism with contemporary Black expression. Through this act of translation, language itself becomes a form of cultural reclamation.

The carved clay surfaces draw inspiration from the façades of Nubian and Hausa architecture, where walls were historically inscribed with proverbs, blessings, and protective phrases meant to guide and safeguard communities. Barnett reimagines this architectural lineage through ceramic tile murals that transform clay into a vessel for memory, protection, and belonging. Words become structure; inscription becomes shelter.

The compositions also echo the geometric rhythms of Kuba and Kente cloth, translating the visual language of these textiles into carved clay surfaces. Drawing on personal and ancestral connections to Ghana and the broader African diaspora, the works ask what forms of language and identity might emerge when colonial frameworks are set aside and older systems of knowledge are reclaimed. In this context, the carved Adinkra letters function as both cultural affirmation and contemporary shield, each mural asserting that Black power is self-defined, enduring, and carried within.

Black Power Ground, 2026

Stoneware | 25 x 12.5 inches

| 25 x 50 inches

Black Power Remains, 2026

Stoneware

2026

Fragment Futures continues Barnett’s ongoing engagement with the yabba, a wide-mouthed terracotta vessel historically used throughout Jamaica for cooking, storage, and serving food.

The series draws inspiration from archaeological drawings of pottery shards recovered from Port Royal, Jamaica following the devastating earthquake of 1692. Rather than focusing on what was lost, Barnett imagines each vessel as whole, completing the missing forms through her own carved interventions.

Wheel-thrown and often accented with gold, the vessels hold two temporal directions simultaneously—one rooted in ancestral form and the other reaching forward. Each object becomes a conversation with the past that proposes new possibilities for the future.

Though often overlooked for its simplicity, the yabba is one of the few surviving forms of African Caribbean material culture. During enslavement, women were permitted to collectively produce and sell these vessels, and for some this labor

eventually helped them secure their freedom. By returning to this form, Barnett reconnects a humble domestic object to the broader story of the Black diaspora.

Through carving, reconstruction, and reinterpretation, Fragment Futures suggests that cultural memory is never static; it is continuously rebuilt, reimagined, and carried forward.

Half / Half I, 2026

Ceramic | 9 x 9.5 x 9.5 inches

Half / Half II, 2026

Ceramic | 9 x 9 x 9 inches

(left)Half / Half IV, 2026

Ceramic | 7 x 7.5 x 7.5 inches

(right) Half / Half III, 2026

Ceramic | 8 x 7 x 7 inches

Half / Half V, 2026

Ceramic | 6 x 7 x 7 inches

Half / Half VI, 2026

Ceramic | 6.5 x 9 x 9 inches

Illusions of Softness is a new body of ceramic vessels that reimagines lace doilies as symbols of resilience and cultural reclamation. Introduced to Caribbean homes as markers of European refinement, doilies were transformed by generations of Black women into treasured objects signifying care, dignity, and pride within the home. Barnett draws on this history through a personal lens, recalling how her mother brought a doily from St. Vincent and the Grenadines when she migrated to the United States in the 1960s.

In this series, Barnett molds and embeds patterns from doilies collected from her family and Southern thrift shops into clay vessels that appear crumpled yet elegant. Fragile lace patterns translate into durable ceramic surfaces, creating tension between softness and permanence. Through this transformation, the works reflect how Black diasporic communities—like the doilies themselves—have continually reshaped inherited forms into expressions of identity, care, and cultural strength.

Lace Doilie I, 2026

Ceramic | 11 x 12 x 12 inches